Ye, can't recall any1 even atempting to attack T'au, if you don't count the issued exterminatus after the Tau were first discovered by the empire, which was prevented by "random"(wink wink) warp storms.

Only speculations that it could've been Eldar/The Old Ones/Whatever that hid them away on purpose to allow them to advance enough to defend themselves (possibly to have another answer against the forces of Chaos). One of the things GW never bothered to build up upon unfortunately.

Panzer wrote:One of the things GW never bothered to build up upon unfortunately.

It would be terrible if they outright told us though! Better to have mysteries than to know that Tau are just like the Orks and Eldar, designed as a weapon to fight Chaos (or the Old Ones' enemies) or something like that.

Panzer wrote:One of the things GW never bothered to build up upon unfortunately.

It would be terrible if they outright told us though! Better to have mysteries than to know that Tau are just like the Orks and Eldar, designed as a weapon to fight Chaos (or the Old Ones' enemies) or something like that.

Oh I never wanted them to just tell us what happened. However some more hints over the years T'au exist now would've been nice. And right now with the whole new storyline advancing stuff they have new chances to tell us new things about T'au.

I meant it more in the "deus ex machina" sense. Just before the Tau are exterminated by the Imperium, they are saved by totally random event, which also protected them for 6000 years or so, what a luck. It could be interesting story if some1 capable get a hold of it, but so far it looks like just lazy writing.And while there is some fluff about other races genetically modifying Tau to have Ethereals (not sure if that's been retconed or whatnot.) But causing the warp storms is too much to ask even for a race like eldars if I'm not totally out of scale.

Attack on the home world, no not that I am aware of; but somewhere I believe in the lore of the Officio Assassinorum, tried to get a team onto T'au to make a hit on Aun'va. I maybe wrong on this one, but someone out there might know?

As to the Origins of the Tau...

The A.T.T. Orbital has some great resources in the Water Caste / Library section. The following were posted by long time member Lyi'ot. All of the following quotes come from these two sources.Official Tau TimelineTau Language Concordance

456.M40 Tau troops launch a a surprise attack on the Imperial planet of Bruttulus. They quickly seize the planet's defense laser batteries and shield generators, making it impossible for Imperial reinforcements to reach the planet's surface. As more and more Tau troops arrive, Imperial defenses are quickly divided...

But the time from the first contact with the Adeptus Mechanicus till the first Tau forays into space...2823 years.So the time between the first contact and first battle with the Imperium is...4,567 years.

Origins of the Ethereals

791.M36 - The Siege of Fio'taun and the End of the Mont'au Plagued by disease and destructive intertribal conflict, the young Tau race teeters on the edge of extinction... during the Siege of Fio'taun... At the height of the siege, strange lights shimmer in the sky, apparently a portent of the end of the world. But soon thereafter the ethereal caste appears, uniting the warring tribes and codifying an elemental-based caste system. Looking back, the time before the Ethereals will be known as the Mont'au, "the Terror" -- a period of bloody societal chaos to be avoided at all costs. [CT, 5-6; CTE4, 5-6; CTE6, 8-9, 28]

Coming of the Ethereals (From Fire Warrior by Simon Spurrier pg. 95) There had been lights, glimpsed dimly around the distant mountaintops, for three rotaas. Stories spread amongst the armies of strange figures lurking in the mist of the hills, colourful attire and fluted limbs melting and capering through the haze. In the heat of battle few of the tribes gave any credence to the tales, stubbornly ignoring the phenomena that pulsed in the night sky, bending all their attention upon the hostilities that were tearing their world apart. On the final day the wind had carried strange resonances, swept aloft from the heights of the jagged peaks. They sounded, the Kilto histories recorded, like a choir of voices, raised in a song of impossible beauty."

Harlequins anyone?

So, all we can really say is that the Eldar have some connection to the coming of the Ethereals. And that a few Eldar words have somehow made their way into the Tau language. Malkor → Mal'caor for 'web spinner' or 'spider', and Begel → Be'gel for 'simple creatures'.

Everything else is speculation, though throwing a warp storm up at "just the right moment", sounds a little beyond the means of even the Eldar?

TauMan wrote:Stories spread amongst the armies of strange figures lurking in the mist of the hills, colourful attire and fluted limbs melting and capering through the haze.

I haven't read the Fire Warrior novel, but that description made me think of how Tzeentch daemons are described in the Horus Heresy novels (before they could call them Horrors, or Flamers, and had to actually describe stuff). The "fluted limbs" part is especially reminiscent of flamers, especially when coupled with the word "melting".Also, "strange" and "capering" are two of the most used words when talking about Tzeentch entities, and a group like the ethereals, prone to subtle manipulations and control, seem perfectly within his purview as a trickster or schemer.

The Tau as a race were not a galactic threat, they would have wiped themselves out in the Mon'tau. The ethereals made them a viable galactic force. Therefore, we do not have to ask where the Tau came from, as there are alien races everywhere you look, and without the ethereals, Tau history doesn't look too different to theirs which makes me doubt that the Tau were an Old One project, as they tended to be self-sufficient as a species on the galactic scale. No, far more likely the Tau were just another one of the myriad of "regular" alien races out there who then had the course of their history altered by the appearance of the ethereals.

So, we don't need to ask, "where did the Tau come from?" We just have to ask: where did the ethereals come from? Currently, it looks pretty open-ended, and GW have left it that way deliberately IMO, with hints that they could be psykers, Old One creations, Tzeentch agents, 1984 style shadowy manipulators, or true believers in the greater good who sometimes have to do things human would find untasteful.

Their evident knowledge of the warp (The FSE codex supplement explored this quite a bit) while the rest of the T'au race are mostly ignorant of its existence, and the efforts of the ethereals to seemingly keep it a secret, lend further weight to theories that they are psykers, or agents of some warp entity.

All in all, I would say that there is a distinct possibility that Tzeentch is involved in T'au history, which is in keeping with GW's current focus on IoM and Chaos and the galaxy's ancient wars.

I've got one or two other thoughts, but they aren't fully articulated yet, so I'll save them for a later response. Also, I'm not saying that T'au are definitely Tzeentch manipulated, just pointing out that it is a possible option, with plausible hints and in keeping with the current atmosphere of the 40K galaxy. What do you guys think?

Coming of the Ethereals (From Fire Warrior by Simon Spurrier pg. 95)Stories spread amongst the armies of strange figures lurking in the mist of the hills, colourful attire and fluted limbs melting and capering through the haze. "

TauMan wrote:Harlequins anyone?

So, all we can really say is that the Eldar have some connection to the coming of the Ethereals. And that a few Eldar words have somehow made their way into the Tau language. Malkor → Mal'caor for 'web spinner' or 'spider', and Begel → Be'gel for 'simple creatures'.

"I have followed the myriad of potential of the Tau with great interest. Thought barely even striplings to us, I feel a strange protectiveness towards them. In time I believe they will exceed even our greatest feats, and master the darkness in their souls." Elrad Ulthran, Farseer of Ulthwe Craftworld.

Harkus959Nobody really knows what the truth is, but at least as the early fluff goes from and from the first Codex: Tau (GW 2001) the implication was that in someway, somehow the Eldar were involved. Even the quote from the first codex by the Farseer Ulthran of Ulthwe would indicate there's something there.

TauMan wrote:Coming of the Ethereals (From Fire Warrior by Simon Spurrier pg. 95)Stories spread amongst the armies of strange figures lurking in the mist of the hills, colourful attire and fluted limbs melting and capering through the haze. "

TauMan wrote:Harlequins anyone?

So, all we can really say is that the Eldar have some connection to the coming of the Ethereals. And that a few Eldar words have somehow made their way into the Tau language. Malkor → Mal'caor for 'web spinner' or 'spider', and Begel → Be'gel for 'simple creatures'.

"I have followed the myriad of potential of the Tau with great interest. Thought barely even striplings to us, I feel a strange protectiveness towards them. In time I believe they will exceed even our greatest feats, and master the darkness in their souls." Elrad Ulthran, Farseer of Ulthwe Craftworld.

Harkus959Nobody really knows what the truth is, but at least as the early fluff goes from and from the first Codex: Tau (GW 2001) the implication was that in someway, somehow the Eldar were involved. Even the quote from the first codex by the Farseer Ulthran of Ulthwe would indicate there's something there.

TauMan wrote:Harkus959Nobody really knows what the truth is, but at least as the early fluff goes from and from the first Codex: Tau (GW 2001) the implication was that in someway, somehow the Eldar were involved. Even the quote from the first codex by the Farseer Ulthran of Ulthwe would indicate there's something there.

But with GW who knows?

TauManPS Although we don't know, my money is still on the Slann.

I remember when I first started exploring the lore beyond the little blurbs in the main rules and codex books and found out about the old ones, and the war in heaven. Every race in existence seemed to be because Old Ones, Chaos, Emperor, or C'tan.

Understandably the Tau could be that, and it's a leading theory for sure, but I think our origins are being left purposefully vague. That said, there was a line in one of the Gathering Storm campaign books that made it sound like Eldar were definitely considering using the Tau, but that they weren't involved in making them as a tool.

Old Ones are still an option, but the time disparity is a bit weird in that regard (Tau showing up more than 10 000 years after other Old One creations like Orks and Eldar?) as well as the fact that these races were well set up to succeed on their own, whereas as I mentioned, without the Ethereals there's very little to mark the Tau out as different from the myriad of other "average" alien races out there like the Kroot, Sllyth, Demiurg, Hrud, etc none of whom are explicitly regarded as Old One projects or major galactic powers.

Ceogorath is an option too as the gathering storm line was mentioned by a craftworld eldar who might not know what plans and schemes the laughing god and his harlequin followers have going on.

Tzeentch scheeming and the ethereals being some new breed of shapeshifter is also possible. Or perhaps they're secretly psykers, something else GW has hinted a lot. Or another theory I've seen around is that the ethereals are time travelling future Tau.

The possibilities are all over the place. Thought I'd throw Tzeentch in for consideration too since that quote made me think of him primarily.

I must ammend my earlier post. I went looking for the apecific line from gathering storm and found this section:

‘Then who would you use as sword and shield alike?’ said Sylandri Veilwalker, one of the high-ranking Harlequins in attendance. ‘The Tau are still too young, the Orks too unpredictable and the Tyranids out of the question. Humans are too easily corrupted, this we know. They walk the same path we once followed, blindly walking into the abyss.’

So, this actually seems to support the Harlequin theory, as it is a Harlequin speaking and the first race mentioned are the T'au (something significant in itself).

Something else to remember: whereas the average Tau lifespan is about 80 years of age, the Ethereal caste live for centuries, possibly as long as a thousand years. This has never been explained, but would again point to a possible Eldar-Tau connection, as Eldar live well over 5,000+ years.

Ignoring the title for a moment, as we're not really discussing whether the ethereals are "good" or "evil" here, but rather how they might have come to be, this video brings up the interesting notion that another alien races DNA may have been borrowed.

The additions may have been made by the Eldar, or Old Ones, or whoever, but the species is called the Kawl (Corl? I don't know I haven't seen it spelled out yet). Might be worth a watch.

Harkus959 wrote:Ignoring the title for a moment, as we're not really discussing whether the ethereals are "good" or "evil" here, but rather how they might have come to be, this video brings up the interesting notion that another alien races DNA may have been borrowed.

Harkus959 it would be best to ignore that for like well...forever. There has been for quite awhile a movement to make the Tau "minions of Chaos". Forgetting of course the most 'grim-dark' aspect of the Tau is that they're 'noble-bright'. Enough said on that.

The Old Ones created more than the Q'orl, if they indeed did, I haven't heard of them until you mentioned them in your post. The Old Ones seem to have created a number of races for the War in Heaven. Races created just to fight the Necronyr/Necrons.

Note there is a theme of "de-evolution" with all the races including the Old Ones becoming lesser species over time.

Warriors: Kroak -> who become the Orks.Pyskers/Admin: Aeldari -> who become the Eldar.Engineers: (name?) -> who become the Jakero.Pilots: (name?) -> who become the Hrud.

The Old Ones were themselves the Leaders: (name?) -> who become the Slann.

Strange how the races fall into a "caste system" that parallels the Tau caste system?